Chapter 8: 8: Upgrades

** Amelia **

 

“This is Jazz,” I said with a tone of mourning, placing her on the table in the engineering room to show the Witch.

The Witch hadn’t left her fox girl form since her nightmare, and despite her assertion that I not touch her, she’d fallen asleep while basking in whatever emotion she smelled from me. Then she’d promptly slumped against me and stayed there. I’d fallen asleep to the girl’s gentle breathing a few minutes later.

I’d woken to the smell of a simple cooked breakfast, and absolutely no recognition that she’d fallen asleep against me. That was probably for the best, she seemed like the type to get upset if we actually addressed it.

“How is it broken?” she asked, leaning forward to get a closer look, her ears twitching with interest.

“Ah, it was an artificing ability. I tried to overclock it near the end of the battle and the random number goddess wasn’t smiling on me,” I said sheepishly. “I burned her out, she needs all new accelerator coils.”

“You gave her a name and use feminine pronouns for her?” she asked, turning those cute, inquisitive purple eyes on me.

“Ah yeah…” I laughed in embarrassment. “Don’t judge me.”

“Oh no, I am not judging. Quite the opposite actually… I find it… endearing, almost,” she told me quietly, her face all smoothed out like she had a winning hand in poker and wanted to keep it on the down low.

Everything within me stilled, the moment hanging in time. Then I felt something stir in my chest, a breathless and quietly eager emotion that I unfortunately knew a little too well. Oh shit. No, this couldn’t be a thing, not for the fucking Witch of Chains of all people.

God dammit girl, stop staring at me with those eyes that look like they’re reaching into me and poking around. Oh… great, now I was off on a dirty tangent as well. Thanks everyone in charge of my mind, real fucking good job, could you all possibly like, listen to fucking orders for once in your miserable little imaginary lives? Didn’t you learn when I kneecapped the dickwads in charge of my mouth?

“Are you alright? You gave off a rather… intriguing cocktail of emotions just now,” she said, a small smile twitching across those alluring lips of hers.

Her fox girl form was just as hot as the Witch one, except there was a cuteness factor to her now that somehow compounded her overly sexual nature. She just moved like someone who could fuck you silly with a god damn glance or something. Just, bam, eye contact followed by mind blowing orgasm. Oh my brain was totally on the horndog path with this one. Please, I begged the cretins in charge of pulling the levers up there, please just stop facerolling the arousal controls for a second?

“Oh, now it’s just that one from yesterday… the one I really liked,” she said, her small smile growing into a slightly wolfish grin, and she honest to god licked her lips. “Still not going to tell me what it is?”

“Nope, no way. Far too embarrassing,” I said, blushing from tit to hairline.

“That’s fine, I’ll get it out of you,” she chuckled confidently, and turning back to Jazz she said, “As for coils… could you get out one of the burned ones to show me? I have a lot of… stuff here from my kills. I might have what you need.”

Oh that first part totally sounded like a threat, but in the most delicious sort of way. Like she was going to use her tongue to do it or something. Please let it be her tongue… oh now it was tongues all the way down in my brain. Arousal controls still getting the full faceroll treatment. Concentrate girl, you can think about Jazz too, get her fixed.

“Uh yeah sure, give me a minute,” I nodded finally, summoning my tools from my inventory.

I got to work on stripping Jazz down, getting her naked as I liked to call it. With the Witch and her fuzzy tail looking on with interest, I unfastened the top rail, just a bronze plate to keep her more delicate internals from being fully exposed. Next was the housing, and then I was into the inner workings of my gun.

She looked and operated almost like a real world railgun, and as such she had a lot of enchanted coils running down the barrel. Unlike in real life, where the things would have been magnets to accelerate the slug, they were a special magically conductive metal alloy that was rather hard to come by. Each one was enchanted with an accelerator spell that would grab whatever magic was funnelled down the barrel and send it shooting out at ludicrous speeds. These were the ones that had burned out.

There were several smaller coils too, two to either side of the larger ones, but these ones were dedicated to feeding raw mana to the spell, enhancing its effects rather than its speed. This was the part that made a simple fireball into something comparable to a high explosive anti tank round. I grinned just thinking about Jazz. I’d never had so much fun with a crafting project before. She was almost like a lover to me. Well, without her actually being one, because that would be weird. Still, she was hot, in a death and destruction sort of way.

I pulled one of the big accelerator coils out as carefully as I could, and handed the thing to the Witch. It was very obviously melted and warped beyond usefulness, and I saw her nod as she saw the damage.

“Yes, I can see how these would need replacing,” she murmured, then she turned her gaze back to mine with a smile. “And I know both where you originally got them, and where you can get more.”

“Wait really? You have a Pag accelerator cannon around here?” I asked in disbelief. “What, do you have it just like, sitting in a room somewhere? Where the hell do you store it?”

“I never moved it,” she smirked, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

“What? But… what?” I stammered, genuinely confused now.

In response, she gave one of the walls a thump with her fist. “This, my dear Amelia, is a Pagutum Gun Platform.”

“Oh my god, you’re right,” I groaned, thumping my forehead lightly against the same wall. “Damn, I am so dumb.”

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“I wouldn’t agree with that,” she murmured with a slight smile. “But come with me regardless.”

I followed her outside and up to the gun that was still mounted on top. I’d never actually gotten my hands on one of these, instead I’d bought the parts for a hefty price, and mine were from a smaller model than this one. Which meant… oh my god. Jazz wasn’t just getting fixed, she was getting a considerable upgrade.

I couldn’t help a giddy laugh when I pulled the big panel off the side of the Pag’s gun and saw those beautiful shiny coils inside. I think my hands were shaking as I took it all apart and collected the precious hunks of metal.

“You realise that Jazz is going to be like… stupidly powerful now right? This isn’t just fixing her, this is a huge upgrade!” I exclaimed, looking down at the Witch who was leaning against the railing of the gun platform and smiling.

“I could guess,” she nodded simply, not letting on anymore than her smile already did.

Damn, this woman was opaque sometimes!

I rushed back inside with the coils and pulled Jazz apart a little more to get things shifted around. Sometimes I had to ask if the Witch had some more metal or other material, and every time she gave me that sly, knowing smile and left to retrieve what I’d asked for.

Where had that nervous, twitchy girl gone? This felt like I was talking to the Witch again, like she’d been off kilter last night but now she was feeling better again? Was it the sleep? Should I ask her? No, that was silly, and would only end badly, just concentrate on your Artificing Amelia.

Artificing was incredible, a hybrid of both profession tree and ability tree, and apart from beautiful women like the Witch, there wasn’t anything that got my heart racing quite like building a janky ass death machine. I pulled all the old coils out of both the top and bottom railings, and got to work doing some much needed cleanup of Jazz’s internals. Things weren’t exactly snug in there, and could do with some space optimisation.

Once I’d removed more components and screwed, bolted and welded them back into place to create some room for the larger and more numerous coils, I got to work on the coils themselves.

I selected the artificing enchantment I needed, and enchanted each one, overwriting the old enchantments on them. I didn’t trust the mass produced Pag spells in the things, and wanted my own ones on them.

With the enchanting done, I set about installing them all. Previously, I’d had six of the smaller coils in each railing, bringing the old total up to twelve accelerator coils. Now I was up to a whopping sixteen larger coils, eight in each rail, and I was already chuckling to myself at the devastation I’d be able to rain down on my enemies.

It took the entire morning and most of the afternoon to get Jazz upgraded, but when she was done, I leaned back with a smile. Oh that had been so fun. I loved Artificing so damn much. It was fucking cool. Now I just needed to give her a test fire…

“Want to go outside and see what she can do now?” I asked the Witch, who was still dutifully leaning against the wall.

“After all that? How could I resist?” she chuckled dryly. “Lead the way.”

We went back outside and up to the gun platform, where I set Jazz on the railing there.

“What should I aim at?” I asked my fluffy companion.

“How about… that big tree out there?” she asked, pointing out into the distance.

She’d picked out a tree that was quite far away, but I was sure I could hit it. I didn’t load a spell canister, instead I just summoned up the most explosive fireball I could muster. I sighted down Jazz’s scope and took careful aim. The tree looked to be almost three hundred yards down range, and it was a huge one.

With the spell loaded, I took a careful breath and eased my finger onto the trigger. At the apex of my breath, I pulled, and Jazz bucked in a way she never had before. The spell lashed out with the familiar whip crack of protesting air, and from one heartbeat to the next is crossed the distance and slammed into the tree with terrifying force. I hadn’t even upgraded the amplification coils, but it didn’t matter, the raw speed of the shot did that anyway.

Where the spell had struck the trunk of the tree, it simply flew apart like it had never been a coherent whole in the first place. Huge splinters pinwheeled through the air to disappear behind my victim’s still living brethren. Then the sound reached us, the low roar of the impact tickling my eardrums with sheer, unadulterated bass.

“Holy fuck,” the Witch said breathlessly.

“Yeah,” I nodded, my eyes wide as I took in the still falling tree that I’d just cleaved in half from three hundred yards away.

She came up to stand next to me and her next words brought a giddy, disbelieving laugh from my lips.

“Are there bigger coils we can put in her?”

“Oh hell yeah there are, on those worm things.”

“I’m going to dismantle one for you, piece by protesting piece.”

 

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